Downtown Market thriving in Grand Rapids

By Rod Kackley

Grand Rapids' Downtown Market is supporting agriculture, helping grow small businesses and bringing new life to a neighborhood that needed a lift.

The Downtown Market, which opened to overflow crowds last Labor Day weekend, was intended to be a "a gritty urban experience that also supported local agriculture," said David Frey, a co-chair of Grand Action, the nonprofit that leads much of the economic development activity in downtown Grand Rapids and led fundraising for the market's construction.

The early indication, Frey said, is that what they intended is what they got: an urban experience that not only is supporting agriculture but one that also is helping grow small businesses and clean up a Grand Rapids neighborhood that had been badly in need of improvement.

The market has attracted a principal from an Ann Arbor baking school and a fishmonger who moved from Seattle. It also has encouraged people in Grand Rapids to leave their day jobs and open businesses, and helped to persuade an Ann Arbor developer to turn two abandoned warehouses into housing.

The Downtown Market includes the Market Hall, where 20 vendors are located on the first floor; an outdoor area for a farmer's market; outdoor rain gardens; a green roof covered with plants and vegetation; walls that include plants and an irrigation system; and 50 wells drilled 400 feet deep to bring heat from the Earth to heat the market.

On the second floor of the Market Hall are rental incubator kitchens, rooftop greenhouses and what Brian Burch, a spokesman for the market, described as the first educational kitchen in the nation designed around "accessibility for children."

Six classrooms onsite are used by the Kent Intermediate School District for 195 students who are studying culinary arts and health care.

"We were invited into the dialogue very early on," said Ron Koehler, an assistant superintendent with the district, "and we saw that we had a lot of programming that could mesh with the Downtown Market."

The market's second floor also has office space for Kendra Wills and two other educators from the Michigan State University Cooperative Extension Service.

"Since there are 20 businesses in the market and more in the Grand Rapids area, the market is kind of a local community hub for local food innovation and education." Wills said. "It is a really good spot for us to be."

Mimi Fritz, president and CEO of the Downtown Market, said some retail space is still available. The market is looking for two restaurants to add to the Market Hall. Fritz also hopes to find a farm-to-table restaurant to take 4,000 square feet in the front of the hall, then another beverage-focused restaurant — a brewery, winery or distillery — for the back of the Market Hall.

The outdoor farmer's market, which opened in May 2013 while the Market Hall was still being built, will open again May 3. Fritz said space is available for 54 booths under the covered market shed and for an additional 30 farmers under the Wealthy Street Bridge on the southern edge of the market.

"We were just shy of 100 vendors last year," Fritz said. "The market shed was full every Saturday, and sometimes the space under Wealthy Street filled up on Saturday, too."

Jeff Butzow, owner of Fish Lads, the Market's only fishmonger, said Downtown Market representatives came looking for him in Seattle, where he ran two retail outlets selling fresh fish and seafood at Pike Place Market.

Being a Traverse City native, he was familiar with Grand Rapids and said coming back to Michigan "seemed liked a good fit."

So far, his biggest problem has been explaining to customers that a "fishmonger" is a person or shop that sells fish.

"It is a new experience and a new product for people to come in and deal one-on-one with a food professional that knows what he is talking about," Butzow said.

Shelby Kibler left the Zingerman's Bakehouse baking school in Ann Arbor, where he was the principal, to start his own business in the Downtown Market, an artisan bakery called Field & Fire.

"A downtown market in a downtown area that is purveying artisan food sounded like a perfect spot for me," he said.

Jermale Eddie, the director of education for the Grand Rapids Urban League, and his wife, Anissa, are first-time business owners. They opened the Malamiah Juice Bar after Jermale discovered juicing and created a drink that even his son liked.

"We are getting a lot of love from the community," he said. Better than that, he said, sales have met his expectations.

Kibler and Butzow said their sales were either meeting the goals of their business plans or were close enough to make them feel good about the decision to set up shop in the market.

COURTESY OF DOWNTOWN MARKET

Among the attractions of Grand Rapids’ Downtown Market: A farmers market with about 100 vendors.

Fritz said most of the vendors are telling similar stories, although she added that market officials don't have numbers yet on sales per square foot. She did not have foot traffic numbers, either, but said market officials are thinking about installing a counter to keep track of how many people are coming in.

The market also has become a hub for the redevelopment of the south side of downtown Grand Rapids, which is filled with vacant warehouses, empty storefronts and homeless shelters behind one of the city's landmarks, Van Andel Arena.

Stuart Ray, executive director of Guiding Light Mission, one of the homeless shelters on the south side, has seen the change in the neighborhood.

"South Division was full of prostitutes and winos," he said. "We may still have some individuals who are struggling with substances, but we don't have the prostitutes we had 10 years ago, and most of the doorways are cleaned up."

Mike Jacobsen, an Ann Arbor-based developer who owns LC Cos., has turned one empty furniture warehouse into the $18.5 million Baker Lofts residential and retail building. He now is working to turn the old Klingman's Furniture warehouse into apartments for the 20- to 40-year-old crowd.

Jacobsen said the market can't take all the credit for the construction projects on the south side of downtown Grand Rapids. He also pointed to The Rapid mass transit system; the new Grand Rapids Public SchoolsUniversity Prep Academy, in the same neighborhood as the Downtown Market; and the work the Diocese of Grand Rapids and Mercy Health Saint Mary's have done to create Cathedral Square, linking their campuses near the market.

But the impact of the market can't be ignored, Jacobsen said.

"It's the Downtown Market and other things, as well," he said. "It was a whole series of events that made this a solid area."

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